Coaching practices for Level 5 Leadership Humility and Will in Great Leaders as a Caregiver

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Level 5 Leadership Humility and Will in Great Leaders as a Caregiver, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

  • I keep catching myself making calls based on how they’ll make me look rather than what’s actually best for the thing I’m building
  • When something goes wrong my first move is to find who dropped the ball, and when it goes well I quietly feel it was mostly me
  • Part of me wants to keep my best people in roles that serve me and to pick a successor who won’t outshine me
  • My team only performs when I’m watching, and I keep bolting on more rules to control it, which just makes everything rigid
  • Everything still routes through me

Practices that may help

  1. Level 5 Leadership: Humility and Will in Great Leaders
    Jim Collins’ Good to Great research found that the leaders who took companies from good to great shared a paradoxical combination of fierce personal will and deep personal humility — what Collins calls Level 5 Leadership. They channeled ambition into the institution, not themselves, and set up successors for greatness rather than engineering dependence.
  2. Channel ambition to the institution, not yourself
    Care more about the organization’s success than your personal legacy.
    Level 5 Leadership: Humility and Will in Great Leaders
  3. Look out the window for credit, in the mirror for blame
    When things go well, credit others; when things go wrong, look at yourself first.
    Level 5 Leadership: Humility and Will in Great Leaders
  4. Develop successors who will surpass you
    Invest in your successor’s success as a deliberate act of institutional ambition.
    Level 5 Leadership: Humility and Will in Great Leaders
  5. Build a culture of discipline, not a disciplinarian culture
    Hire self-disciplined people, then give them freedom within a clear framework.
    Level 5 Leadership: Humility and Will in Great Leaders
  6. Build people’s autonomy and capability
    The aim is people who need you less over time, not more.
    Servant Leadership, Made Practical
  7. Lead with empathy and acceptance
    Accept the person fully even while refusing to accept poor performance.
    Servant Leadership, Made Practical
  8. Watch for the accidental diminisher patterns in yourself
    Most Diminishers are not aware they are diminishing — the behaviors that made them effective as individuals undermine them as leaders.
    Multipliers: How Leaders Amplify the Intelligence Around Them
  9. Model the values you expect (idealized influence)
    Become a living example of the values you want your team to hold.
    Transformational Leadership, Made Practical
  10. Model vulnerability and uncertainty as a leader to accelerate safety
    Deliberately share your own uncertainties, mistakes, and questions — it gives permission for others to do the same.
    The Four Stages of Psychological Safety

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